“The current law of the land says the state must provide coverage to these individuals, like refugees and people granted asylum. Starting October 1, states no longer have access to funding for those programs,” said Shelby Gonzales, an expert on immigrant access to benefit programs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The tools that are utilized by states to verify eligibility based off of immigration status are challenging, and they’re imperfect.”
Verifying a person’s eligibility is an extremely complicated and lengthy process. States first need to identify “potentially affected” enrollees, then undertake new eligibility determinations beginning on October 1. They must reverify the status of those potentially affected, and contact those immigrants whose status was unable to be satisfactorily verified electronically. The state must provide these enrollees with 90 days to provide documents necessary to verify their status, then offer at least 10 days of notice before terminating or reducing benefits. On top of that, states will need to update their eligibility systems, as well as enrollment data and financial claim reporting, to fulfill the new federal requirements. Because of the complexity of this process, people who remain eligible for Medicaid and CHIP could still lose their benefits.
“They may experience procedural disenrollments or coverage disruptions due to fear, confusion, or challenges completing the verification requirements, because they may have difficulty understanding the new eligibility rules,” said Drishti Pillai, the associate director of the Racial Equity and Health Policy Program and director of Immigrant Health Policy at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization.
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